26/10/2016

Can everyone hear me, in Buenos Ares? Ok we’ll try and do this. So this is the first time that I have spoken to people outside the embassy; my Internet was cut off. It’s a bit unusual for me to be trying to do a talk by telephone but I can tell – we’re going to try and do it.

First of all, thank you to the Computers Workers Union who put this event together and organized it. I see that quite a lot of universities are involved in Argentina and there are some interesting people here. It’s quite nice, actually, to such support for the free software movement and for ideals that I have fought for for a long time, [supported] by the government of Argentina and other institutions within Argentina.

(Interjection in English – Julian, can we please explain to the audience what has happened here?)

Julian: Ok well let me introduce myself. Uh, My name is Julian Assange, I’m the editor, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks. I have technical training, I taught myself to program when I was thirteen, and became a computer hacker or explorer of the world when I was quite young, um, I’m from Australia. I developed a lot of free software and different projects, became a system administrator, and started my own Internet service in Australia writing crytography programs to protect people and their privacy from spying. Wrote some books about that type of thing, studied the national security agency, and eventually studied theoretical physics and decided eventually that actually I wanted to try and bring about more education and justice in the world. And that the easiest way for –

(Spanish)

Documents per year for the last ten years – uh – of that time, uh, six years – I’ve been detained by – without charge – by – here in the United Kingdom –in this embassy in London – where Ecuador gave me … the Embassy was then surrounded by police.. under siege by the British (embassy) for the last four years. They say that’s about $ twenty million dollars of spy equipment.

Now just recently we started our series on the US election which is extremely interesting – on how the US election operates, because Hillary Clinton is the wife of Bill Clinton. And these lobbyists that work for her just like John Podesta. Our first big leak in that series was the DNC series and as a result of that being published in, uh, July – uh – the top five officials of the US democratic party resigned including its president. Debbie W. Schultz. (Spanish)

The democratic primary election between Hillary Clinton and Bernie sanders principally had been rigged; in favor of Hillary Clinton by the committee that runs various parts of the – in many different ways including the – pushing out fake stories that uh Bernie Sanders supporters were trying to organize violence, making sure more of the money went to Hillary Clinton, and so on.

When we released the 20,000 emails which were released in a way that wikileaks became famous for, special customized search engine to- (mumbled) it’s actually quite hard to make uh, an (engine?) to display and search through email; there’s so many (broken?) mail standards and mail programs. It’s quite a lot of work. Uh, and, it, encouraged, uh, all the people in the United States from outside the United States who were interested in the election to sort through them. So this punched a hole in the media censorship that exists in the United states by top TV networks and about eight of the nine major publications in the United States are biased in favor of Hillary Clinton.

(Spanish)

So in response there were many attacks and the U.S. DC establishment which believes that Hillary Clinton will be the winner in the election tried to find different ways to distract from out publication. First of all they tried to say that we support Donald Trump just because we were criticizing Hillary Clinton. Then they tried to say that actually we were secretly working with Russia to uh, publish this material that was criticizing her and that this was some sort of cyberwarfare against the United States.

But I have learned from a lot of experience that the best way to deal with these attacks is that you never flinch – you never blink – you just keep on publishing. Because every day that you publish is a day that you have the initiative in the conflict.

(Spanish)

So we continued on publishing the emails of Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign manager, which are even more politically interesting than the emails of the Democratic National Committee. I had been exploring what was had been the connection between Hillary Clinton, her campaign manager and what had been the sale of 20% of all of the US uranium to Russia through a company in the United States called (Dual?) limited.

(Spanish translation)

And that was very interesting as we showed that Clinton’s campaign manager had been lying about investments in a nuclear energy company and is very closely connected with a Canadian mining magnate and had 75,000 shares in this company and moved them into another company secretly, controlled by his daughter, and so on, but much more important was that in the investigation we managed to get hold of more than 50, 000 emails related to Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign manager John Podesta.

So this time we started a different strategy, which uh, was to write an algorithm called the Stochastic Terminator which is designed to be unpredictable and to adjust how much it publishes and selects based upon what we as human beings suggest to it but also based upon what it reads in the news. And so it selects the emails to be published and it publishes each day and we started doing that on the 7th of October.

(Spanish translation)

And this really whipped up a crazed hornet’s nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign and in all the establishments that are backing her. Now we have always had the analysis that Hillary Clinton would win for sure. From more than twelve months ago. But she has pooled (pulled?) around her every single establishment in the U.S. – intelligence agencies, the neoconservatives who started the Iraq war, the weapons manufacturers, the big banks and investment companies, like Goldman Sachs, most of the middle class, and most of the media, and so now, uh, we have all these people – all these establishments trying to defend Hilary Clinton from being exposed as having many corrupt relationships.

So they started attacking our servers with denial of service attacks and attempted hacking attacks – there was a, and there is a – amazing ongoing campaign where fake documents were put up in the UN and in the British courts to accuse me of being both a Russian spy and a pedophile – a molester of children.

(Spanish)

You can look up that amazing story, that, we tracked down the –how this hoax was made – at the UN and the British courts to call me a Russian spy and a pedophile by a front company in the United states in Texas called Todd and Clare.

(Spanish)

But that wasn’t enough so the pressure started to increase and the pressure started to increase- started to pressure Ecuador – of the opposition parties in Ecuador – some of which were sympathetic to perhaps because of their relationship to the United States and pressure – statements made to Ecuador at the political level and at the intelligence level that I needed to be stopped or there would be consequences.

(Spanish)

But Wikileaks is a global publisher, publishes over a million documents a year, uh, we publish from France, Germany, several, Norway, Holland, several other countries, we have most of our lawyers and staff in the EU and several other countries and in the United States. We don’t publish from Ecuador; no particular reason, just the bandwidth is cheaper and the servers are cheaper in Europe rather than in Ecuador.

(Spanish)

So the United states Government in the form of John Kerry; the Secretary of State – some United States officials and the Hillary Clinton campaign kept putting forth propaganda to say that our publication was revealing various forms of scandal within Hillary Clinton’s network was in fact interference – in the United States electoral process.

(Spanish)

But this is not interference in the electoral process; this is the definition of the electoral process. Is for media organizations and in fact everyone to publish the truth and their opinion uh about what is occurring?

There cannot be a free and informed election unless people are free to inform.

So you basically have the Obama administration taking control of parts of the government and using the government to try and shut down critical and true information being revealed and analyzed by Wikileaks being revealed and read by the American population.

So now let’s look at it from Ecuador’s point of view; uh, while I disagree that they didn’t give me any notice, uh, about what was occurring, I did not like, uh, the, uh, how it was done, I am very sympathetic to the concern that the Ecuadorian state had.

…. Next video

Ecuador like most states that are not Empires has a policy of nonintervention uh in the interior processes, including elections, of other states.

Now, It makes perfect strategic sense why small states should have such a policy. Because if they did not have such a policy, larger states could use that as an excuse to intervene in their affairs or their elections.

So here we have a dilemma (INTERFERENCE IN AUDIO STARTS HERE ). On the one hand, Wikileaks is a publisher that doesn’t publish from Ecuador, and it is as a publisher, whose duty and its obligation is to publish everything that is true that it can get its hands on about a very important election that is occurring right now in the United States.

(Spanish, Interference)
On the other hand, the big TV networks in the United States with the exception of Fox are controlled by Clinton supporters and by the U.S. intelligence establishment which is also aligned with Clinton, pushing statements before the public which Wikileaks is interfering in the US election. Which is false, but nonetheless it is a claim that is being made very loudly in the US.

(LOUD AUDIO INTERFERENCE CONTINUES, translation in Spanish)

And this claim, although false, could be used to legitimize the United States interfering in Ecuador’s election next year.

(Spanish translation ,interference remains)

Now of course we actually publish from Germany, Norway, France and Holland; The United States has not as far as we’re aware tried to apply significant pressure to those countries; but I am a symbol as the ideological leader of Wikileaks; and that symbol is being protected as a political refugee by the state of Ecuador, so they think they can go after the symbol and they think they can bully, try to bully, Ecuador, because it is a state in Latin America that is not (?) to the hilt.

(Spanish, interference continues)

So we end up with a strategic position for Ecuador that the INTERNET AT THE EMBASSY IS SHUT OFF UNTIL THE END OF THE ELECTION so that Ecuador’s policy of non intervention can’t be misinterpreted by actors in the United States and even domestically from Ecuador.

(Interference suddenly stops, Spanish)

Of course I don’t agree with it, but, I understand it. (Interference resumes) And Ecuador has been strong in other ways; giving asylum in the first place and also continuing to (refuse?) quite strong pressure from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden, to cart (cast) me out into the streets to be arrested.

(Spanish)

And just compare; what the government’s position is; about half the opposition party is going into the Ecuadorian election next year in February say that they also will protect my asylum. Uh, but about another half, so, but as a campaign mission they will hand me over to be arrested, despite the United Nations on the (6th?) February this year making a formal (finding?) that I am legally correct in my; – being illegally detained by the United Kingdom.

But wikileaks is a – you know you could ask what type of dog is a different company or organization and wikileaks is one of the fighting dogs that has a lot of energy and runs around fighting all the time. It’s thrilled to fight, it loves nothing more than to fight. And so, uh, when MY INTERNET WAS CUT OFF of course we had long ago made strategic contingency plans for exactly this situation. Uh, so, uh, despite, uh, bombs raining down on us from (papers?) by high U.S. officials, media and so on, this is exactly the sort of situation that we enjoy. And so there was not even uh, one day’s pause; we just continued on publishing the next day even though I was cut off from my team.

(Spanish)

Ok so – that’s where- we’re up to date in the story – any questions? (Interference suddenly discontinues)

(question in Spanish)

Julian is thanked, and applause.

(question)

Julian: Ah, as I said, it has long been our analysis that Hillary Clinton will win the election because she has all the establishments on her side. And we can see that in terms of polling; if someone like Donald Trump who has a great many problems which I’m sure that all of you are aware – but if he managed to get up near the 48 to 50% level the polling; which he has, just uh, two occasions, across the different polls, uh, united. Then immediately those big media networks and funders get together and smash him back down. So I don’t think there’s any chance of Donald Trump winning the election; that would probably be bad inside the United States, it would probably be good outside the United States. But, um even with the amazing material that we are publishing and will continue to publish. Because even though we publish it and we have people on the Internet reading it directly, most of the media organizations in the United States are very strongly aligned with Hillary Clinton.

Two reasons really, a lot of them are owned by big business, which are owned by banks, which are aligned with Hillary Clinton the other is and a class reason. Most journalists and media workers are very middle class and Donald Trump represents in their minds, white trash. So to be doing anything that supports Donald Trump looks like you’re supporting white trash, and that means to those rivals they have within their class that they are white trash. So it lowers their social status; and that’s a very dangerous thing to in an institution is to have your social status lowered because someone else might get your job. Or the job that you want to have, within the institution, so there’s a lot of conformity and a lot of fear about criticizing Hillary Clinton in any way at all. So it reduces the impact of even the very significant material that is released.
But what is the impact for Latin America? I think it’s extremely positive, because, this is the first time in U.S. electoral history that we can see the power structure going into the new presidency.

The various alliances and forces of Hillary Clinton and her team, we are exposing day by day. So that’s going to shift understanding of the phenomenon, that then everyone has to deal with inside the United States and out. It becomes more predictable, and also the worst excesses of her are easier to contain.

(Spanish)

(Question in Spanish)

As a security expert, or former security expert, and someone whose had to continue to understand that in order to continue to protect wikileaks, uh, and our sources. (AUDIO INTERFERENCE RETURNS) I think electronic voting is completely crazy. The electronic aspect of it is- even if there is photography – maybe especially if there is photography – makes it so complex that individual people and communities can’t assess whether it is doing what it says that it’s doing. And so it becomes easy to manipulate.

Now even if there are rules to have sophisticated auditors; uh, external auditors monitoring (on the ground) and checks and so on we all know the reality; once those rules are set up – the auditors – gradually they are defunded or the auditors get lazy and they gradually start to disappear and those people want to manipulate the system; understand the ability and limitations of the auditors as more and more time goes by so I think electronic voting is completely crazy, uh, for national elections. Perhaps for some other things it might be alright; but for the national elections where the real power involved I think this is mad.

(Spanish translation, audio interference continues)

(Question in Spanish)

On the second part of that question, about overseas processing data, in the United states and elsewhere, obviously, information if it’s in U.S. jurisdiction is accessible to U.S. authorities. However with that said, it might even be more accessible if you’re not in U.S. jurisdiction because they hack it and steal it anyway. So this issue of the breakdown in areas of jurisdiction… is a much broader issue which is causing the breakdown and a disappearance of effective borders.

A blending in, or a merging in of different states with each other. There’s a lot of benefit to that, but on the other hand it seems quite likely that the largest most powerful electronic states, like the United States, like China in a few years, will be able to hold and gather together critically important functions of other countries uh and then will be able to squeeze these functions both in terms of (data) from them and perhaps more importantly uh, in terms of, demanding fees, in court cases, or simply cutting off access.

(Translation in Spanish)

The power structures of the whole world are becoming computerized. That should not be any surprise to anyone in this room. So therefore we, as technological workers, uh, can have a unique ability to shape the power that is to become and not simply be useful idiots which is how politicians in general and most executives think of technical workers. But rather the intelligent skilled technicians that understand not about our technical labors but how our technical labors facilitate and interface with the evolving structure of international civilization of course within our own country.

Uh, now, efforts to establish our own rules and our own culture, for say in example the free software community have produced really quite important advances. But at the same time some of those advances like free software are also being treated as in common – and are being gobbled up by ever larger corporations like Google or ever more abusive mega institutions like the national security agency which uses linux and free software all over the place; that’s nothing for us to be proud of. That the fruit of our mind is being used in that way, that’s rather something for us to be ashamed of; that the fruits of our mind can be taken and repurposed in a way to make the world that we live in less free and less humane

So wikileaks is the vision that I had for using my technical skills to do something about some of these problems but there’s many other ways in which one can do it. I think the important thing is to kind of look at what is happening in the world as the rest of the world’s power structures coming into our domain, and thereby try and exercise some influence over the situation. Rather than seeing our domain as something that is being gobbled up by something that is part of these existing power structures.

(Spanish translation)

(Spanish Question)

Julian: oh they’re gone –

(Spanish continues)

Julian – hmm-

That is a very important question, one that shapes our thinking in society and our solutions to our problems can only be as good as the clarity of our thinking. The mass media. And we are also shifting into control from social media and easy internet publishing has broken through easy censorship that mainstream media has been performing – at the same time there is consolidation in the owners of social media that is leading to various forms of censorship. There’s a great book, ah, that’s been published, ah, I think it’s in Argentina it’s definitely in Spanish; called Wikimedia links. And that is an analysis of Latin American media the cable that wikileaks published showing the relationships between the U.S. State department and various media oligarchs in Latin America; now why did a separate group have to be published from that? Well obviously the Claren group is not reporting about the Claren group; and there also exists a type of truce between the different media groups to not report critical information even amongst these groups that – or these groups that you’d think would be rivals because they are too scared to get their – into a media war with each other so they tend to censor news that is critical of the media.

Now one of the things most remarked on by our recent publication about the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign is how many unethical journalists were – so Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager was approving what they – uh – private parties with sixty five different journalists where they didn’t report on anything that happened at the party, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta (cooking?) together and so on.

But you’re right, the, uh, New York Times or the Claren (sp?) group or CNN, are very big difference in people’s opinions in how that works. We did that for Sony corporation. News Corporation is a media corporation and that shows very interesting things, for example, Sony tried to do a deal with UK prime Minister David Cameron at the time of the Scottish referendum in 2014, to not air a TV series which was pro-Scottish until after the referendum. So they met with David Cameron, and what could they get from that? Well they could get some tax (concessions?) in exchange from queing off this series about problems, which would increase Scottish Nationalism. So those are those are the type of issues.